It's Not A Bender, It's A Lifestyle.

Cheap ass flight booked for Xmas trip. 5 months from today will be back in Vegas.

Trip 3 over. Conflicted. Not going to do a blow by blow on this one, because it can be broken down easily into three categories, a meditation and a plan for the future. Category One: The Good -I saw Alice In Chains. They were great, easily the best part of the trip. Good setlist (though no Rain When I Die, damn it), good acoustics, I was up close and they didn't miss a note. -I ticked a few new resorts off my 'haven't been" list. Palms, Rio, O'Shea's. Wasn't in any of them for long (O'Shea's was about 2 minutes) but at least I can say I was in them. -The late nights at Cosmo's Vesper. Hung out 3 of the nights at this great little bar in the bowels of Cosmopolitan. This place is comedy. Great people watching and the bartenders are a hoot, commenting on all the drunken idiots they have to put up with every night. -NYNY. Another unfailingly clean, comfortable and quiet room a what has become my go-to resort. The steak o...

In 24 hours I'll be at the airport waiting for my flight to Vegas, hopefully in the airport bar pre-gaming. Everything's good to go. I will hit the money mark on the head, and have enough left in the bank that I won't have to worry about coming home completely broke. I always make sure I've got a little buffer anyway, and I don't think this trip's going to be much of a cash suck. Lot of freebies or pre-paid stuff lined up. Unfortunately I WILL have to hit either my bank or an ATM a few times as my direct deposit won't go in until tomorrow night, which sucks. I love to pull out every penny I'm going to spend and have it in my pocket when I get on the plane, but eh. It's probably safer this way anyway.  Laundry's done, packing basically done and will finish tonight, need to shave (head, face and balls) tonight then it's off to sleep, up early, out of work by 1p tomorrow, hit the bank, come home and try to get a couple more hours of...

4 days until I'm on a plane to Happyland. The plan is pretty much set. Flying in Late Friday, no room, so it'll be get to NYNY, drop off the bag at the bell desk, then My Greatest Vegas Hits that night, which will likely mean get straight over to Cosmo for warmup drinks and maybe a snack at the Henry, then working my way up to Rockhouse and The Whiskey Room at Venetian and maybe Abbey Road at Mirage. Then working my way back down to the Vesper at Cosmo again and maybe playing some slots after, then grabbing a breakfast at America at NYNY and dicking around there while waiting to check into the room. All of this is malleable of course based on if one of those places (or some other damn place) becomes interesting for one reason or another. Once getting into the room, hopefully by noon Saturday it's sleepy time all day (oh Jeebus let it be a quiet room) then up around 5:30p or so to get ready to head over to Palms via cab for the AiC show. Like to get there by 7p ...

I don't really know what my situation in life would be without the constant Vegas trips, good or bad. I would undoubtedly be San Francisco stir-crazy. I really don't leave the City unless it's to go to Vegas, outside of one trip last year to go see my mom in North Dakota. I VERY occasionally have to drive somewhere on company business outside City limits but for the most part of my life the last 7 years, say 99%, has been literally IN San Francisco. When I took my first trip to Vegas in 2011 it was sort of a bucket list thing. I was a couple years removed from a serious heart attack before the age of 40 and I had been forced to come to grips with mortality. It wasn't a big dramatic thing for me, I never felt, even while it was happening, that I was going to die. But there were a few things in the couple years after that I said I wanted to do, and for some reason Vegas was one of them. Ironically I had actually been looking at flights/room in Reno for a get away wee...

As I promised in my last (rightfully negative) myVegas post, I cashed in what little LP's I had for my trip next week and deleted the game from my PC and iPhone. It's just not worth the time and effort anymore. The pay-for-LP's option in the game has never made sense to me. If you're paying to get enough points for a buffet, why not just, you know, PAY FOR THE BUFFET and lose the middleman. I'm not going to miss the game. Over the year that I played it I cashed in a few hundred dollars worth of rewards so it was more or less worth the time spent, but as the rewards become scarcer and less attractive it's not anymore. I did get some cool stuff out of the game (including, on this trip, a KA ticket and a meal at Nine Fine Irishmen). I would absolutely never had gone to a Cirque show had it not been a free option through myVegas. I just would never have gone to a box office and bought a ticket. Through the game I got the free ticket to Beatles Love, wh...

Oh boy. A blog post from one of the Vegas news blogs I follow, Vegas Chatter, has me thinking about doing something very dumb and possibly fatal. They have a semi-tongue in cheek post about a "Vegas bucket list" of things to do in town. One thing on the list grabbed my attention: "Walk the entire strip from Mandalay Bay to Stratosphere, having a drink or shot in every casino." Yep. Challenge accepted. I'm blowing off my former plan to go downtown on the last day of the trip, Monday, and will be attempting this instead. I'm going to flip the script on the direction, though; I will travel up to Strat first and work my way down, probably riding the monorail to get up there. There are only about 10 resorts on the left side of the strip coming down (hardly sporting) so I will work down the right side of the strip instead. This is a challenge. I'm skipping anything that's not a Resort/Casino, and anything not ON the strip. The orde...